If you’ve been following along, you might be thinking, what more can we add to literature lessons during middle and high school? Well, join us today in the podcast to take a look at grades seven through nine literature lessons in the Charlotte Mason curriculum.
Listen Now:
Charlotte Mason, Volume 6 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)
ADE Vol 6, Chapt 10 Reading List
English Literature for Boys and Girls by HE Marshall
The Age of Fable by Thomas Bullfinch
Shakespeare (Folger and Oxford Editions)
ADE Literature: Forms 3-4 Breakdown
Emily
Welcome to A Delectable Education, the podcast that spreads the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method. I’m Emily Kiser and I’m here with…
Liz
…Liz Cottrill…
Nicole
…and Nicole Williams.
Emily
So far in our series on Literature in a Charlotte Mason curriculum, we’ve covered all of elementary school, half of our kids’ school careers. Isn’t that terrifying.
So today we’re turning to the next group of forms, Forms 3 and 4. Students are in Form 3 for two years, seventh and eighth grade. And one year in Form 4, which is ninth grade or the first year of high school for us here in America. And these years are really a transition point for a person’s development, right? If you think about your own middle school journey, it probably does not fill you with lots of warm, fuzzy feelings, right? It’s a fraught time.
And so it’s a transition from childhood to adulthood, right? And so their literature lessons are reflecting this transition as well. They’re transitioning from their childhood literature lessons to their high school and beyond literature reading. So Nicole, will you tell us a little bit about their program of work?
Nicole
Yeah, in Form 3, their literary feast widens even more. Across the 40 programs, or almost 40 programs, we can see each term lists three to ten titles. It varies widely, with six or seven being the average. There’s three strands that are non-negotiables.
First of all, Shakespeare was read every term, usually a lighter history or a comedy at this stage, read aloud in character, and almost always Form 3 students read the same play the Form 2 students were reading. So there could be some combining there.
And then Bullfinch’s Age of Fable continues again with the same reading schedule as in Form 2, just term after term.
And then they also read from the History of English Literature for Boys and Girls. And this spine marches in step with the time period, the historical time period that they are reading. And it will continue on into Form 4. So around those pillars, the menu really rotates.
We see a lot of Sir Walter Scott still. Two out of three terms. So maybe you think like two novels of that caliber a year. And then there’s extra poetry that shows up just all over the place. Ballads from Scott, Southey, narrative poems by Tennyson, Kipling. And then roughly a third of the terms, there was an added historical adventure or travel tales such as Westward Ho or the Coral Islands. And then out of that many programs we have essays appear twice, both times Lamb’s essays. So you know, it could be pulled in there, we’re not sure.
So we think that leaves like, you know, one novel per term. It’s not, you know, there is a variety here of types of books they’re reading and those novels would also go with the literature time period.
So in Form 4, grade nine, it really looks familiar on paper to the Form 3, but it’s really working its way up a notch again here. The pillars remain the same. Shakespeare, though, now includes some of the heavier tragedies and late histories, such as King Lear, Coriolanus, and Richard III. About half the time, their play was assigned the same as Form 2 and 3. Sometimes it wasn’t. So that was just something to note.
And then the history of English Literature for Boys and Girls spine continues, still tied to history. And then Scott remained on the program at this level, but then we start seeing some of the more dense Waverly novels at this point. Ivanhoe, I don’t know if I can do this one, Kenilworth, is that right? And Woodstock, again, always unabridged terms books at this point.
Nonfiction was introduced here. So this was a new thing. Every term now we see an essay. So I mentioned that like just some a couple times in Form 3 but this is where they really enter the scene. These were things like Ruskin, Carlisle, Lamb or Addison. Again more poetry, more poetry, lots of poetry on these lists but the poetry became a little weightier at this point. Some Tennyson poems, Browning pieces that were bigger and then we also see some travel narratives by classic authors.
I think at this point the object is, as Charlotte Mason put it, to give the children wide spaces wherein imagination may take holiday excursions. I just loved that. And to cultivate judgment, she said, of every citizen that we must exercise on public questions.
She referred to strikes or unrest and how we would deal with that kind of thing. We learn that through some of these books.
Emily
That was a very, very pressing thing that they think, you know, possibly without World War I England would be a very different country today because of the labor unrest.
Nicole
Yeah. The caliber rises with the essays and the types of Shakespeare books that are being read. Scott’s demanding longer stamina at this point. But the underlying rhythm remains the same and is always the steady growth in attention, imagination, not necessarily the mastery of every line, but we’re just challenging and moving.
Emily
Okay, so you said six to seven works a term or a year, if they stretch out over the year, in Form 3 and about eight in Form 4. You might be relieved if you listened to our last episode to know that they have more than one time on the timetable that they can read. But they have doubled their amount of work. So they’re still not going to be reading everything during their morning lessons.
Form 3 weekly had one 30 minute literature lesson and one 30 minute reading lesson. And the things that you described, Nicole, are actually listed under both parts of the program.
Nicole
They were, yeah. Right.
Emily
So the lighter portions of the program were actually listed under the reading. But there was the note that both of those included holiday and evening reading. So there is the expectation that they’re not going to be getting through all of those things during these morning lessons, even though they have two, right?
Liz
And this might be unnecessary but I should have said it last episode. When she says holiday it’s what we call vacation. Just making sure she wasn’t saying they had to read it on Christmas Day.
Emily
The time between the terms, which actually did coincide with church holidays – there was a big Christmas holiday and then the Easter holiday.
And then in Form 4, they actually had one 40-minute literature. So their literature time went up a bit, but their reading time stayed at 30 minutes. So during their lessons, they’re probably going to be reading their anthology, their mythology, and maybe some room to read some of those other portions of their literature.
Individually, it’s the same format that we’ve been talking about all along. So that at least isn’t changing, right? It’s just the caliber of literature. But what we do with those books does stay fairly the same, except the child is growing more in their independence and they’re doing more of their reading themselves.
So they, of course, should begin by recalling the last lesson. We may want to arouse their interest in today’s lesson. As a side note, I usually just jot that question or a little tidbit down on a Post-it note and put it at the beginning of the book, as I might be working with a younger child.
And we do have a few examples of oral lessons at this level that were given by teachers trained by Charlotte Mason to students of these ages. We don’t have them for the earlier years, interestingly enough. And those were mostly every time a new author was being introduced. So I think there is, like if you’re going to start an essay by somebody or you’re going to read an author you haven’t read before or a long poem, you could do an oral lesson introducing your students to that person and what you know, a little short biography of their life, you know, their contributions to literature, etc. And I think that does go hand in hand again with the literature anthology. They’re getting some of these ideas already.
So then they read probably a full chapter or a full passage, a complete thought. And they’re usually reading independently at this age. They narrate, the note in the, it’s on the timetable actually, is where we get the note about how many written narrations. For forms three and up, it said at least two written narrations a day. So at least two, minimum of two, possibly more. But there’s plenty of time for the reading of that section and then the narration all within that lesson.
And then after their narration, there’s a little talk. Again, we’re not asking comprehension questions. This is really for them to have a chance to wrestle with their thoughts about a book and for you to get a little glimpse into what they’re thinking about.
Now the exams again, just as in Form 2, there would be questions on everything assigned, but there were going to be choices. So they have to answer one of the following and there would be like three options. If there was something that was, well actually it wasn’t for everything. So because they had so many things they might not be getting to all of that during the term, but they were expected to read it.
Charlotte Mason tells us the objective for literature lessons at this age. She says the object of the children’s literary studies is not to give them precise information as to who wrote what in what in the reign of whom. Who wrote what in the reign of whom. But to give them a sense of spaciousness of the days. In such ways, the children secure wide spaces wherein information may take those holiday excursions, deprived of which life is dreary.
Again, as you said, Nicole, they are developing their sound judgment and opinions. What Charlotte Mason said was the duty of all people. And she repeatedly said literature is our greatest moral teacher because we can live vicariously through people. In a novel, we can see the whole course of a life. We can see the effect of the choices, you know, what happens to the person as a result of the choices that they make. I think of Becky Sharp, of course, in Vanity Fair is one that’s very vivid. And those things are very instructive for our children and hopefully will spare them a lot of grief in their life.
As far as teacher prep, we schedule out the work of the term. I think that now is an appropriate time to be working with the child to figure out how are you going to accomplish all this reading? You know, they need to kind of know what the whole scope is and get on board with that. And then to set aside time each week for Shakespeare and to ensure they do have daily time and cultivate your family rhythms to allow for daily time for reading or they won’t be able to accomplish their program of work.
I do recommend pre-reading at this age, or maybe not pre-reading, but just reading at the same time. If you could be reading their novel while they’re reading their novel, you know, not together, but concurrently, just so you can maintain sympathetic interest and discussion with the kids.
A few resources to show you today. Here is English Literature for Boys and Girls. It is interesting to note they were only in this form for three years, but the book was on a four year rotation. So they’re not going to get all of it. So you don’t have to worry about starting at the beginning. You read the part that coincides with your time period.
And then Age of Fable, Form 3 continues this just as they had done in Form 2. This is just the, both of these are the Yesterday’s Classics editions of these works. We do have literature breakdowns for both Age of Fable and for English Literature on Boys and Girls if you need help scheduling that out. And it includes all four years so you can figure out where you need to be reading in the book.
And then Shakespeare, I’ve mentioned before, but our family’s favorites are either the Folger Shakespeare Library or the Oxford School Shakespeare. We get a copy for each person and it does help if they’re the same edition because there are differences in the editions of Shakespeare. We had a rather heated argument this past year in one of our readings because daddy’s copy was different. And then we do have a Shakespeare planner available on our website for picking the plays and which ones, like Nicole was mentioning, were reserved for Form 4 and up.
Liz
And I would just like to say that if you are a little nervous because your children just became competent readers a year ago and they’re at this level, we always take a child from where he is. I would still encourage you to, that they’ll be ready for this challenge. You know, when you have teens, they can be seemingly a little argumentative, but it’s really a sign that they are starting to think for themselves and we do want that too. So they’re ready for these deeper topics and the more mature ideas that are in a lot of these books.
So the challenge is that they think that school is over when those three and a half or four hours of the morning lessons are over, and she is encouraging them to make literature a habit of life. Sure, they can go out and blow off steam for a couple of hours, but they are going to have to spend some of their afternoon and evening times. She said that, you know, in Form 3, they should get to know six poets every term, that they personally are familiar with them and understand. And I think another reason that poetry becomes part of their own time that they have to spend in it is that they’re reading, like Nicole said, these longer epic poems. I don’t mean the Iliad, although I think that she did assign Iliad and Odyssey in Form 4. I mean, just, you know, something like Evangeline by Longfellow even is very long and it’s going to take them a few weeks to get through that one poem.
Anyway, but do require them to read. It is part of their responsibility for school. But don’t badger them about what they think of everything they’re reading. This is a lot for them to ponder and just give them the space for making their own opinions about things. That’s what’s really important to them at this age.
And I would say at the most, you’re going to be maybe assigning some of the things from these readings for composition, but we’ll talk about that in a later episode. And especially when they get to be in Form 4, first year of high school, they need even more time to read. And we just have to help them to be more realistic about how many extracurriculars they can participate in, and how many things they can say yes to outside of those morning lessons.
These years are still crucial for them to be developing their minds in school, but they’re also really busy years and they’re having a lot of outside interest. So they’re having to learn to cope with the reality that of all of us adults in life…that you can’t do everything. But school, we have to remember and encourage them about, is still the main work before play.
Emily
We are almost through our survey of literature lessons in a Charlotte Mason curriculum. Next week, we will wrap up with looking at the rest of high school lessons. So in the meantime, check out our show notes for the links to all the resources that we mentioned today. We hope you’ll join us as we continue to spread the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method.